Musophobia
by a-mild-looking-sky
Summary: Why is Winston Smith so afraid of rats? [A series of incidents exploring different reasons for this fear - or, 5 times Winston was afraid of rats, and one time he wasn't]
1. Part I - Yersinia Pestis

**A/N: So this story will take the form of a '5+1' story: '5 times Winston Smith was afraid of rats, and one time he wasn't'. It's my first venture into 1984 fanfic, which is a bit intimidating, but it's a book (and film) I adore ~ It'll be based mostly on the book, and partly on the film starring John Hurt.**

 **MUSOPHOBIA**

 **Part I - Yersinia Pestis**

Winston's memories are not complete. They are more like dreams; snatches of hazy images that come to him every now and then. It is as if he is looking in a fractured mirror. He thinks he sees himself in it, but it could be a trick of shadow and light. There are faces he imagines he recognises - his mother and his sister, huddled together, embracing one another. Or maybe that was just a frame he saw once in a Party broadcast.

Somewhere, something tells him he murdered his mother. He doesn't know why he feels that. It is a sensation he gets occasionally. He vainly attempt to force the pieces of his past together, but they won't fit. It is a patchwork of mismatched seams, trying to unite the tears in the fabric.

There is one picture that always arises, though, whenever his mind drifts to his childhood. He knows he shouldn't think of it. He knows he should leave it alone. He knows that it doesn't matter. But, sometimes, he will see something, or smell something, or hear something, and he will be abducted back to that distant place. It still somehow seems important.

Winston watches his mother and sister through the void. They are sick, and he is hungry. Or maybe they are hungry, and he is sick. Either way, he wants what they have. His mother is holding a chocolate bar to his sister's lips, trying to make her eat. Winston steals it from them. That part he is sure of. He remembers the feel of the wrapper between his blistered fingers, and the sweet, rare taste of it in his parched mouth. In one version of this memory, he savours it. In another, he stuffs it in so fast he almost chokes on it. But whatever happens, he keeps it all to himself.

He cannot remember if he felt shame back then. But the passing of the years have built the emotion into a tower of guilt.

In the next picture, he returns to the house. It is deserted. Now, he can barely recall the appearance of the rooms, only the desolation, only the emptiness. His mother and his sister are gone. He cannot be entirely sure they were there at all.

Ghostlike, he walks to the bedroom he imagines they might have been in before. It has turned black and blank in his memory. But in the gulf, there are noises. Forms swarm and multiply like bacteria. They emerge from the darkness. He knows what they are. This part he cannot forget.

Rats populate the gaps in his past. He remembers that he stood there, frozen, and watched them clamber over each other. Before his eyes, they moved like a dark wave, squealing, scratching. Sometimes, Winston still imagines the feel of their tails curling around his legs. His mother and sister were gone. And in their place - rats.

He no longer can say what happened after that. The scenes turn into muddled blurs. He grows older and ends up in this gutted apartment in the Victory Mansions.

But they are still here. The rats.

They are always here.

(tbc)

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 **A/N: feedback always appreciated c** :


	2. Part II - Changeling

**Part II - Changeling**

The rats are in the walls again. Winston lays in his cold bed and listens to them. They gnaw and scratch and fight, claws tearing at the wood. Sometimes, he hears the rafters creaking above him and imagines what might happen if they fell through. This whole building is riddled with them. They swarm in their thousands, whole hordes skulking in corners and watching from the shadows.

He cannot escape them. They spy on him like they know what is on his mind.

He buries his head in his pillow and tries not to hear them. He thinks his thudding heart might be enough to drown them out, but it isn't. They are mocking him, possibly. Some horrible thought, unbidden, chilling, tells him that they can sense his fear.

He has heard horror stories about the proles' experiences in the city. If babes in cradles are left alone for too long, the rats will smother them. They will stare into the infant's eyes for a moment, and then, like a nightmare, they will bare their sharp teeth. The child will be stripped to the bone, or dragged into the sewers. He can imagine what it is like. He can feel their fangs on his flesh, he can feel his muscles being pulled apart, and their little mouths drinking his blood.

Was it just a horror story he'd once heard, he wonders. Or did it happen to me?

His panic sometimes becomes so absolute that it strangles his mind and chokes out vague, dusty memories. If that's what they are. Somewhere, in the distant void, he thinks there might have been a hollow room and a bug-infested crib. He thinks he might have laid in it once as an infant. He thinks the rats might have tried to take him away.

Maybe they did. Maybe he is not who he thinks he is.

I am Winston Smith. 6079. Smith, W. 6079.

But, in the darkness, terrified and alone, he could be anyone.

The rats prey on the helpless and frightened. That much is certain. The tiny space of this room is not enough to keep him safe. He is trapped. One of the animals could easily squeeze through the memory hole across from him, and its comrades would follow. Where would they start? he wonders. How long would it take to succumb?

He realises he has let out a small whimper. Ice is poured on his terror. He clamps a hand over his mouth and tries to restrain his panting breaths. He knows the telescreen must have heard. The suspicion forces him to lay there, prone and silent. He squeezes his eyes shut. The rats are still scurrying in the walls. They will always be there. They will always lurk around him somewhere.

In the blackness, he thinks he can see glaring, bright orbs. They stare at him until he can feel the weight of their surveillance on his bones. But he cannot tell if it is the rats, or the omnipotent presence of Big Brother.

* * *

 **A/N: I intended for this to be longer, but never mind ~ The following chapters will be. Anyway, in this chapter, I wanted to explore a more psychological reason for Winston's fear. I feel like he's a bit more obviously vulnerable in this than in the book (the first parts of it anyway) but I liked exploring a sort of 'existential crisis' aspect to him, which O'Brien will exploit later! Oh, and as a side note, I think rats are quite cute so I thought of how I feel about spiders while writing this (which I hate haha).**


	3. Part III - Hamelin

**Part III - Hamelin**

"I will have to get moving soon."

Winston does not want Julia to go. She is a tiny little thing but she is warm - which is more than he can say for the rest of the room. The wind creeps in through the gaps in the window, and the walls are damp and cold. The thin blanket does nothing, yet for the past hour, Julia has been nestled against his side, and that is enough. She goes to get out of the bed. He grasps her arm.

"Curfew is at twenty-three in my building, I've told you," she says.

"You still have half an hour," he reminds her.

"Let me at least get dressed."

She squirms out of his embrace and throws back the covers. As she reaches for her clothes, he cannot help watching her. She is not especially beautiful, but she is different. She is different and she is his. Out of her blue overalls and red sash, she could have been a remnant of the distant, hazy past, or of a future without Big Brother. In her nudity, she is free. Once she is in those clothes again, and they have left this room, Airstrip One will reclaim them. But here - this bug-ridden, dilapidated cramped space - is a strange kind of haven.

Winston pulls the sheets back over the bed. He has longer until curfew at the Victory Mansions. He can afford a few more minutes. That mundane laziness, reminiscent of another time, is thrilling. Again, he wonders if this was once normal - laying around with nothing to do but sleep, make love and be at liberty to do as one wished. Here, they can pretend it still is.

The aura is broken when Julia suddenly hurls a boot across the room. It smacks against the wall with a loud crack. Winston jumps. "What was that?" he asks, alarmed.

"A rat. I saw him poke his nose out."

"A rat?" Any momentary delirium vanishes and Winston is tugged back into the present. The dream of this little building being a safe shelter for them turns to dust. Big Brother returns at the thought of the rats.

"Yes, but don't fret, I'll board up that hole as soon as I can. The dirty bastard isn't getting in here."

Winston swallows. It almost doesn't matter if Julia closes the gap up or not. The beast has already made its mark. Without thinking, he glances around the walls, looking for any more vulnerabilities that the creatures could squeeze through. The familiar crush of paranoia and suspicion strangles him again.

Oblivious to his dread as she dresses, Julia is still talking about rats. "There are hundreds of them in our hostel. I am the best rat-catcher of all the girls. The rest are all too squeamish to deal with them. But you can't just let them run amok. Did you know they steal babes from cradles if they are left alone in the prole areas? I've heard of them stripping the poor things to the bone -"

Winston shivers and wraps his arms about himself. The images are bad enough when he is on his own in his bed, but here, being told in such a brazen way, they somehow seem more real. He swears he can feel them gnawing at him, trying to tear off his flesh, just like Julia says.

"I have a strategy to catch them," she continues. "You cannot merely chase them and grab them - they're too quick for that. You have to make sure they have no way to escape. Sometimes you can trick them - they're only dumb creatures, after all. Just the other night, I cornered one. A big, black fat one. He could have taken my hand off easily. But I managed to get him where I wanted him."

Winston is beginning to feel nauseous. He wants to stop listening, or he wants Julia to stop talking, but he cannot get away. The awful visions swarm in his mind. "I had a knife and a net," she says, pulling on her overalls. "I forced him into the corner, and blocked off any way he could run. They get scared, of course, and try to writhe away, but eventually, they give in. I caught him in the net and killed him outside - the girls don't like me doing it inside. But you've got to do it, otherwise the bastard will just come back. Sometimes I think there must be a whole swarm of them lurking about underground or something - hordes and hordes waiting to come in. What a horrid thought -"

Winston can't bear it anymore. He shuts his eyes tightly, and begs, "don't go on!"

Julia stops. He hears her voice, softer now. "What's the matter, dear? You've gone quite pale."

Gently, she cradles his head and presses it to her breast. "My love, you're shaking. Don't you like rats?"

He tries to focus on her arms around him and the softness of her skin beneath the open overalls, but some sickening dream keeps coming back to him. He is in front of a tall, black wall and does not know what is on the other side. All he can tell is that it is something dreadful - a nameless fear that rises from the deepest, darkest places. And then that other image flashes before him - the empty decrepit bedroom of his childhood, populated by waves of fighting, sharp-eyed rats, writhing and scratching, getting closer and closer. He trembles violently and clings to Julia like she is keeping him afloat in that furry, brown sea.

She strokes his hair soothingly until he has stopped shivering. And then she eases him back carefully, as if he might break now he is separate from her embrace. He catches his breath and when the panic begins to drift away, it is replaced by a sense of shame. Part of him wants to tell Julia about his nightmare and his mother and sister, but she would not understand. "I just don't like rats, that's all," he says instead.

She doesn't ask any more questions. "Well, don't worry. Like I said, I'll sort that hole out as soon as I can. And I'll kill the beast if he comes in here again."

It doesn't make Winston feel much better. Julia is so unfeeling about taking the creature's life, and distinctly ruthless with her capturing strategies. Not for the first time, he wonders if she is a member of the Thought Police.

As if nothing has happened, she returns to dressing. Winston watches her again, but now more guardedly than before. Eventually, her bare, free guise vanishes and she turns back into the regular Party comrade. When she ties her red sash about her waist, she also ties a knot in their rendezvous for tonight. Yet at the door, as always, she pauses. She looks back at him and says, seriously, "I love you."

Winston echoes it. And then she is gone.

He still has a while until he has to move. But, with Julia out, all that remains in the room is him and the rats. Sitting, naked and alone in the bed, he feels horribly vulnerable. If one of the animals skitters in now, he thinks he might die.

He dresses quickly and leaves the shop in more of a rush than is normal. The eyes of Big Brother follow him through the night. Suddenly, he does not feel he can escape them in that little room with Julia. Like the rats she kills, he thinks he is running between hiding places. But eventually, he fears the net will fall over his head and the knife will skewer his stomach.

* * *

 **So I'm sorry this took so long to update, I've been working on other things and have shamefully kept abandoning this haha. This was the third part of the '5+1' format, based on the scene at Charrington's in the book (though with some differences!). There is two more parts to go and then the extra part! Feedback always appreciated c:**


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